Broken down, the number works out at a staggering 216 million messages every single day. For comparison, the UK's population is currently close to 60 million and the MDA says the average person sent 1,213 texts over the year.

The most popular day for texting each other appears to have been 31 December, when almost 400 million SMSs conveyed New Year greetings across the ether.

Happily for networks keen to drive up usage of the more lucrative MMS, that medium showed similar growth last year, with 553 million picture messages sent. That's 23 per cent up on 2007.